


Julia

by Sarea Okelani (sarea)



Category: Alias
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-25
Updated: 2004-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-08 14:09:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarea/pseuds/Sarea%20Okelani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>LJ drabble request from Jade - Sarkney; "If you do this, I promise you'll regret it, but you'll love every minute."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Julia

They meet in a bar, in Belarus. This time, anyway.

The shock of seeing someone she'd known from her old life is not enough to make her react. Not at this point. If she'd seen him even a month ago, things might have been different. And if it were anyone, it makes sense that it'd be him. They are both well traveled, after all -- geographically, and in one another's circles. Not just because of what they do. She feels certain that even had she become an English professor, a bus driver, a telephone operator, they would have met. Some how, some way. He is one of those souls, she thinks, whom she meets again and again, life after life.

Their circles intersect.

He doesn't look surprised, either. At least outwardly. They are also both masters of mien. He takes a seat next to her. "I know a lot of people who are looking for you," he says casually, and signals the bartender to refill her shot glass and get one for him.

She doesn't answer, but she's glad for the drink. She sips hers, and enjoys the way it burns down her throat and sits like a warm coal in her stomach. The bar is packed, and loud, and Sark isn't speaking very loudly, but she can hear him perfectly. Maybe it's because he's speaking English; the Belarusian and Russian around them gets drowned out like white noise.

"You look different," he notes. "Still good, though."

Good. What does that word mean? She used to know, or at least used to think she knew. Now she knows nothing.

"So do you," she says, because it's the truth. He hasn't lost that boyish, British charm, and his clothes still look made to fit. But why should he be different, just because she is? "What are you doing here?" she asks, only half interested in the answer.

"Oh, a little of this, a little of that," he replies noncommittally. This probably means he's killed five people. "And yourself? Have you been in Minsk all this time?" He reads her silence. "No, of course not," he murmurs. "I've seen your boyfriend -- what was his name? Vaughn. His new bird's a little blonde thing, a bit tarty if you ask me."

"I'm in the hotel across the street," she says abruptly.

"Well, let's go then," he replies, tossing down the rest of his vodka.

Her room is silent, dark. They don't turn on any lights, but both move through the rooms with ease, long practiced in the art of stealth. She undresses him and he undresses her, and their guns are carefully placed on the dresser that sits in front of the bed, so that they are at an equal distance from their weapons. If it comes to that.

"If you do this, I promise you'll regret it, but you'll love every minute," Sark says.

_I won't regret it at all,_ she thinks, but that's her secret and she doesn't say it out loud.

She enjoys herself, probably more than she should, but what does it matter? Once, he calls her Sydney, and unexpectedly it makes her throat feel dry and tight. No one has called her that in a long time. She is Julia or Agent Bristow; no in between. And it's because of that that she's survived things no one else would have. She shuts him up by kissing him; he's not supposed to make her feel things like that. He's supposed to make her remember what it feels like to be with someone because she wants to be, not because it's her job and the person she loves thinks she's dead and she can't tell him otherwise because he's found a new life without her and he has a new girlfriend and she can't believe it took that little to forget her, as if she never meant anything at all, as if she'd never saved his life and he'd never saved hers and they'd never met in a dark storeroom to talk about important things or give each other gifts like picture frames and fleeting little touches--

"Shh, shh," Sark soothes, and her tears are lost in the dark and in the hair next to her temples.

"It's all right, keep going," she says, and when they move their bodies together and gasp in time to the rhythm they're making, she does forget. She gives in to the attraction she was never allowed to feel for this man, the attraction she kept in a vault with all of her guiltiest secrets. She could never have acted on it before, but now she's free to do whatever she wants. Tomorrow, she's returning to Spain and to Simon, but after that...very soon after that...

None of this will be real. It won't even be a dream, or a memory. It just won't be there.

She won't be there.


End file.
